About

Credits

Concept, Rules and Layout: René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas

Illustrations: Galen Pejeau

Heroes: Andrew Boyd, Lynn Jones, Matteo Sciutteri, Xavier Tétreault, Gabriel Lemire, Louis-Philippe Déragon, Dominic Tremblay, Emmanuel Beauregard.

Miscellaneous

• Heading text font: Centaur MT Std
• Body text font: Candara
• Table entry font: Nimbus Sans L
• Helper text font: Roboto Condensed

Inspirations

While designing Nightsong, we have drawn inspiration from many games, books, films, and other media, including:

Games

This game would not exist without the foundations laid by these amazing projects and their brilliant creators.

• MÖRK BORG, by Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr
• Mausritter, by Isaac Williams
• The Black Hack, by David Black
• Into the Odd, by Chris McDowall
• Cairn, by Yochai Gal
• Shadowdark, by Kelsey Dionne
• DURF Expanded, by Emiel Boven

Video Games

• Guild Wars, ArenaNet
• Ori and the Blind Forest, Moon Studios
• Child of Light, Ubisoft Montreal
• Hollow Knight, Team Cherry
• Fable, Lionhead Studios

Films & Series

• Onward, Pixar
• Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibli
• Wolfwalkers, Cartoon Saloon
• Avatar: The Last Airbender, Nickelodeon

License

Nightsong is released under an open license. You are free to use it to create your own game built on its rules or to develop compatible third-party material.

Attribution Text

If you use our Licensed Material in your own published work, please credit us in your product as follows:

This product is based on Nightsong, published by Fari RPGs (https://farirpgs.com/), developed and authored by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas, and is licensed for use under the Open RPG Creative License. This product is licensed under the ORC License held in the Library of Congress at TX 9-307-067 and available online at various locations including www.azoralaw.com/orclicense and others. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein.

Overview

What Is This

Nightsong is a fantasy adventure game of heroism, friendship, and mysteries in an era of wonders and dangers. Players take the role of wanderers, bound to no lord or guild, carving their own path in a world still reeling from the calamity that recently befell it.

This game is two things.

• First, it is a set of rules, systems, mechanisms, and procedures designed for playing either as a solo game, as a duet with one other player, or as a group.
• Second, it is a breathing, living world called Penumbra, described and hinted at through character creation options, tables, adventures, creatures, and more. Penumbra existed before you started playing and will continue to persist long after you’re done with it.

You can use Nightsong’s setting as-is, or make minor or even major modifications to the default assumptions about the world to better suit your table’s taste.

You can also bring your own setting and rely solely on the mechanics and procedures of the game to carry your story forward.

A Game of Nightsong

Here is a quick but important outline of what Nightsong promises, both mechanically and thematically.

Traveling the land of Penumbra, the characters will:

Relying on the rules of Nightsong, players will:

• Set the scope. Whether players want to walk the path of heroes, explore the land for its mysteries, build a small haven for their loved ones, or something in between is entirely up to them.
• Have conversations. During play, the established fiction will unfold and the players’ choices will outline a potential fiction that may or may not come to pass.
• Roll dice. In moments of uncertainty, dice will be used to resolve what happens next. Certain factors based on the established fiction or mechanical traits may shift the odds, but dice serve the story keeping things unpredictable and interesting.
• Make new rulings. There will be moments in the story where the players wish a rule covered how something should be handled, and it won’t. In those cases, the players are expected to create a new rule for themselves, adapting it over time to make this game theirs.
• Be clever. Even in a radiant world, the dangers of the land and rules this game can be harsh on characters acting foolishly. Players are expected to play in a way that outsmarts the world. People have goals and desires. Monsters have weaknesses and tells. Pay attention, ask questions, and a path forward will reveal itself.

How To Play

The goal of Nightsong is to explore a fictional world and watch an emergent story take shape over time.

Every player at the table controls a player character. Each player chooses what their character thinks, feels, says, and does. The world then reacts to those actions.

The remaining player is the Referee, the neutral voice of the world. The Referee describes the places the characters visit and portrays the people and creatures they encounter, known as non-player characters or NPCs. The Referee is also responsible for presenting problems and opportunities to the player characters, making the world react to their actions, and deciding when the rules come into play and how they should be interpreted. It is the Referee’s job to challenge the characters and put obstacles in their path, forcing them to show what they are made of. But it is not the Referee’s job to decide how the story ends. That is what play is for. We play to find out what happens.

In a solo game, a single player fills both roles, leaning on the Referee’s tools and oracle tables to answer questions the world would normally handle. In a duet game, one player can serve as the Referee while the other controls a single character, or both players can share the two roles, trading off as the fiction demands.

At its core, the game is a conversation. The Referee sets a scene, players ask questions and declare actions, outcomes are resolved through fiction or dice, the world shifts in response, and the conversation picks back up.

There is no need to memorize every rule before the first session. A cheat sheet is included with this game covering the essentials. If a rule is forgotten mid-session, make a quick ruling that feels fair and look it up later. A misremembered or bad interpretation will not ruin the game. What matters is that the story keeps moving and everyone at the table is having a good time.

Dice

This game uses polyhedral dice. They are written as D followed by a number indicating which die to roll. D4 is a four-sided die, D6 is a six-sided die, and so on. A number before the D means roll multiple dice and add the results together. 2D6 means roll two six-sided dice and sum them.

Each die type has a distinct role in the game:

• D20: Used for Ability Checks, testing a character’s capabilities against a difficult challenge.
• D4 to D12: Used for Step Dice, tracking dwindling resources and consumables. Also used for Damage and Armor rolls during combat.
• D%: Used as a Die of Fate, an oracle for answering questions about the fiction when the player characters are not directly involved in the outcome. Note that this is the individual percentile die (labeled 10, 20, 30, … 90, 00, where 00 represents 100), not the combined D10 + D% roll you may have seen in other games.
• D66: Used to draw results from the various rolling tables and generators in the game. Roll a D6 twice. The first roll is the tens digit, the second is the ones digit. Results range from 11 to 66, for a total of 36 possible outcomes.

Play Materials

When playing in person, each player needs a printed character sheet, a set of polyhedral dice, and a pencil with an eraser. The Referee needs the same, along with a printed copy of the game’s cheat sheet.

When playing online, digital and interactive versions of the character sheet, cheat sheet, dice roller, and more are available at https://nightsong.farirpgs.com/resources.

Rulings

The rules in this game are resilient and hackable, but they will not cover every situation. Bend them, break them, rebuild them to suit your table. This game is yours, and you have our full permission to make it your own.

You are also encouraged to publish your own material, whether compatible (“Designed for use with Nightsong”) or derived from it (“Powered by Nightsong”). For more on this topic, visit https://nightsong.farirpgs.com/license.

Design Principles

These principles shape how the rules were designed, how the Referee runs the world, and how players approach the game.

• Fiction First. The conversation at the table drives the game. The Referee describes a situation, players respond based on what makes sense in the fiction, and dice step in only when the outcome is uncertain.
• Rulings Over Rules. No rulebook can cover every situation. When the rules fall short, the Referee makes a fair call and the table moves on. A misremembered rule will not ruin the game.
• Classless. Characters are defined by the equipment they carry, the conditions they bear, and the choices they make. There are no classes or levels gating what a character can attempt.
• Player Skill. Clever thinking matters more than what is written on the character sheet. Ask questions, study the environment, and use what you have.
• Danger Is Real. The world does not scale to meet the characters. Weapons break, Armor wears thin, and some fights simply cannot be won. Know when to retreat.
• Combat Is War. Fighting is a choice, and rarely the safest one. Ambush, negotiate, outmaneuver, or avoid the fight entirely. Stack the odds before drawing steel.
• Information Is Free. Players should have enough information to make meaningful decisions. The Referee describes situations honestly and telegraphs danger clearly.
• The World Lives. Factions pursue their own goals on their own timelines. Events unfold whether the characters are present or not.
• Emergent Story. There is no predetermined plot. The story arises from player choices and the consequences the world delivers. Play to find out what happens.
• Growth Through Experience. Characters advance typically after completing an adventure, overcoming a dangerous foe, or returning from the depths with hard-won treasure.

The Nightsong Rulebook

The complete rulebook contains everything needed to play, whether in Lorent or a world of your own making. It is organized into the following chapters.

• Introduction. The game’s premise, how it works, and what to expect at the table.
• The World of hidden name. The default setting for Nightsong, its history, peoples, and places.
• Character Creation. Building a character and stepping into the world as a wanderer.
• Rules. The core systems of play, from ability checks to combat to magic.
• Procedures. Adventuring in practice, covering travel, exploration, and encounters.
• Bestiary. The creatures and dangers that inhabit the world.
• Guidelines. Refereeing advice and notes on converting material from other games.